January 16, 2021
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You got your Xanga Archives - but wait...What?! No Images? - here's the fix
In my last post, I discussed what is going on with John, and why any development with Xanga is on hold - indefinitely.
This post is specifically for people who were able to log in and download their Xanga archives. If you're not able to log into your Xanga account or don't see archives available, I can't help you with that, sorry.
Now...
Today I'm going to share one of the most common challenges people have had when they've been able to download their archives and to migrate to another WordPress based site: Images not displaying correctly or at all.
I've had this issue when migrating Autisable's content to its new location, so passing along this information to help those still seeking a solution. (apologies for taking soo long on this fix, been pretty slammed with life myself)
So, let's start at the beginning:
1. You log into your Xanga account and were able to download your archives.
This is essentially a WP Export file (.xml) that contains all the basics of your content.
2. You use the import tool in WP to upload the file (Tools -> import).
Assuming you did the first two steps with no issues... we go onto step 3
3. You notice that your images were not imported and have to address each image individually.
So, what do you do?
Here's the fix...
After you import your archive into your new WP based site, you'll use the AutoUpload Images Plugin. This plugin will look for the image URLs and get those images and upload them to your local WP uploads to the directory and add them to the media library. It then replaces the old image URLs with the new URLs.
This process is semi-automatic and is pretty quick. You can remove the plugin once you're done.
The step-by-step guide is shown here: https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/257180/how-to-import-wordpress-posts-with-images-from-one-wordpress-site-to-another
The plugin is an old one, and it still did work at the time of this writing. You can see it here and is available when you search via the plugins in WP - https://wordpress.org/plugins/auto-upload-images/
Once the plugin is activated and your content uploaded, you'd focus on step 4, where essentially, "you select multiple posts and then under 'bulk actions' choose 'edit' and press the 'apply' button. Then, without making any adjustments, click the 'Update' button. Depending on your server you may get a timeout as the process runs, so it's a good idea to do this maybe 20 to 50 posts at a time."
My notes on this fix...
My experience with this is that you may have to run it several times until all of your posts are updated. Although 20 to 50 posts at a time is possible, I've had to reduce that to 4-10 posts at a time so the error didn't occur due to server time0ut. I'm sure this is because some posts may be image-heavy and take more time for the plugin to work. But, it does work!
I discovered that most images will have 'xanga.com' as part of the image URL. You can search your posts for 'xanga.com' to find those posts where the images are. Then, as the instructions state:
1. select multiple posts under bulk actions
2. choose edit
3 press apply
4 click update. (the default settings of this plugin should work fine, they did for me)
The number of posts with 'xanga.com' should be less and less as you repeat these steps. This means that the images that you were dealing with should be downloaded as part of your WordPress site, and the URLs updated accordingly. Check your blog posts to see how they now display, and those images should be there.
Once this is done and you're satisfied with the results, remove the plugin - as you won't need it anymore (unless you're importing from other accounts/sites)
The result should be that your new site should have all of the posts and images from your Xanga account. Now, I know it worked for me without any issues (except error timeouts), but it's always good to back-up your site before doing this type of work.
Feel free to leave a comment with any questions/concerns.
